Earth Below
by TolkienGirl
Summary: There are two sides to every story. [Modern AU Hades/Persephone; in which Hades is an excellent and arrogant lawyer, Persephone is tired of goddess expectations and Manhattan society, and nothing is as it seems.]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: A sudden inspiration to try my hand at another multi-chapter modern AU. We'll see how it goes!**

 _Myth and legend tell of many gods, many brothers, many voices crying out for power and greed, and love._

 _And there were gods, and there are gods, and they live and walk as men do, in the same worlds, burning with the same furies, crowned by the same desires._

 _But as for brothers, there were only two._

 _i._

The knife slashed deep.

Persephone picked away at the packing tape and frowned ruby-red.

The shoes were beautiful; gold was too simple a word. They were star-studded, with tiny gems constellating along the heels, pointed toes capped in a liquid turn of metal.

She had told him to stop sending gifts.

Persephone tossed aside the knife, tossed aside the box, tapped across glossy parquet in shoes that were almost as beautiful, and skimmed a languid finger over the surface of her phone.

His name wasn't _Apollo_ in her phone. His name was Adam, like that first and fallen man.

 _Stop._

He was typing in instant. It was like he was waiting for her. And wasn't everyone? Her mother; the web of power—not a family, more of a dynasty, or a curse, that linked them. They all stood waiting for this youngest hope to step up. To take on her mother's gifts as though she wanted them. Oh, she was tired of gifts.

 _Stop_ _keeping me awake at night._

As though the god of the sun did anything but find his own lights by night.

It was May. She no longer had school to keep her occupied. Somehow, that made Ap—Adam's advances more taxing. As though he wasn't several thousand years her senior. Didn't he ever get tired of being a perennial frat-boy?

Across the hall, she could hear her mother's voice, and she moved towards it, with a wayward glance at the free and ignorant city, silhouetted beyond the picture windows against a sky that held too much for her.

She found her mother in the dining room. Demeter was dressed in green. Demeter was always dressed in green. She moved her stylish, non-prescription frames down her graceful nose and said, "We're going to the country."

She must have seen the box, and known who sent it. "I thought," Persephone said deliberately, "That you wanted me to stay here and make… _connections_."

"It's summer," Demeter said, folding her arms. Her nails, unpolished, tapped absent and silent against the folds of her silk sleeves. "Summer means you're all mine."

And it always had. Persephone was twenty-two, and a year behind everyone else at Columbia, studying literature and hating it. But when she was nine, and her father left—wary of deities, as she had no right to be—he could never keep for her long, even then. Now, as then, Demeter's hands reached for her; she pulled her perfect daughter against her softness, and murmured, "You can't grow up yet."

"I'm not going to leave you to rule a world," Persephone said. She wanted to be left alone. She wanted to gaze out these floor-to-ceiling windows, wanted to stay with her sleek white grand piano. The country was too much her mother's territory, warm and all-consuming.

"I don't trust Apollo."

"Don't you remember? He doesn't want to be called that."

The maids had boxes ready for them by seven o'clock. Persephone went out as Paige, Paige who went to Columbia, and drank with her friends.

The world spun a little, but only a very little. She cursed at the bathroom mirror in the dive bar, thought of taking her fist to it, making something uneven of all that glass.

It would hurt her. But she had her mother's blood, and that meant it would leave no scars.

 _ii._

When the most powerful man in the city bit his thick lower lip and pressed pen to paper, it almost elicited a smile. But contract coup or no—victory or bliss—there were appearances to keep up. The victor only rocked back slightly, all arrogant, excellent posture and a level gaze to match, and said, "Thank you, Mr. Donaldson."

Mr. Donaldson was represented by counsel. Five lawyers; and so four too many. Too many cooks—too many coroners—what was the expression? They shuffled him out of the room before he could burst a vein, or tear up the contract he had so unwillingly signed.

"Sir?" Alys was at the door, furrowed brow in full effect.

"What is it?" He straightened the square of black silk in his suit pocket.

"There's someone to see you."

She always had the same tone to indicate that particular visitor. He turned, looking at inky windows, beyond which the city was aglow, and said, "Show him in."

The footsteps were silent, but he could count seconds.

"Hermes."

"Hades."

Hades turned. Hermes, as usual, was all pinstripes and wryness. "It's been a long time."

"Alys remembered you."

"You're being gracious."

"It's turning to impatience. What has my brother done now?"

Hermes ran a hand through his hair, which, like its bearer, was always springing in different directions. "He says he's found Olympus."

That was enough to still Hades' hand, pouring an amber stream into two cut glasses. Other people would have said _what the hell_. He disliked the irony.

"Where?"

"He hasn't told me that. Hasn't told anyone. Didn't even tell me about this." Hermes shifted from one foot to the other. "I overheard."

"Of course." When one had been a god for centuries, with very little to do for the last several dozen, it was utterly without point to get ruffled over family infighting. Inwardly was nobody's business.

"He sees it…"Hermes shook his head. He was getting more restless by the second; it meant he wanted to go. He had never liked anything but open spaces. "He sees it as his duty."

"There is something disgustingly literal," Hades said, "About this particular golden child." Then he smoothed a hand through his dark hair—the only unruly part of him—and turned on a leather heel.

Hermes' voice held him a moment longer. "Zeus believes your father has woken."

Hades stiffened, shoulders hard. "Olympus is gone," he said steadily, but not, as Hermes likely perceived, without effort. "We are little more than ageless men, and my father will never wake. I have seen to it."

Hermes shrugged. "You've kept your world," he said. "They'll never let you be the only one."

He was gone before Hades could kill him.


	2. Chapter 2

_Gods lived before the world, though after, as always, was still unknown. Mortals breathed and died, empires rose and fell, and old worships faded.  
But fading is tangled in memory, and even faded memories last long-_

 _-especially when there is more than one world, at more than one time._

 _i._  
"Don't you love it here?"

It was a country cottage. It was beautiful, if not at all like New York was beautiful. It was green and hazy all around. One could hear - almost feel - the low hum of life and growing. There was a gravel drive, with needle-thin blades of grass climbing through. Everything was seeking freedom here, but in a content, self-satisfied sort of way, as though freedom was very near indeed. Persephone stared at the clouds and wondered if they belonged to the earth. After all, if she wanted to, her mother could draw back the curtains of time and they wouldn't see the mortal world anymore. They would see Olympus, see sky and sea, existing untethered to this careening little globe.

Her mother never wanted to.

 _It is safer here, Persephone. Safer where there is time. Safer where we look like them._

The Greeks were not the first to know them-they were only the first to name them. But they were mortal, and they could not last. _Psyche, Io, Theseus, Jason. Prometheus, who took something and lost everything_. All of them were gone.

Persephone did not remember them. How could she?

She was born in this world; when Demeter fled to the safety of time, the strange security of the twenty-first century (even if it existed only for gods), she let herself love a mortal.

Persephone opened the door to the cottage. It was nothing like New York.

"How long will we stay here?"

Demeter's shoulders rolled back, as if the wind in her hair needed her to brace against it. "As long as it takes for them to leave you alone."

Persephone slipped her phone into her back pocket. "Again, I thought you wanted me to learn who I was. Who we are."

Demeter thinned her lips. "They don't want you for that."

It was an old argument. "I'm going to take a nap," Persephone said. "There'd better be wifi here." She didn't stomp upstairs. She was half a goddess. They weren't supposed to stomp.

Demeter never used the same summer home twice. Nonetheless, the room Persephone found at the top of the stairs was familiar enough. Her mother had sent all of her books, and they were wreathed comfortingly around the room. She lifted up _Jane Eyre_ , read the first page, and tossed it down again.

Sleep - crafty Hypnos - shouldn't have found her. But as she stared up at the ceiling, painted with delicate flowers, she felt her eyes drifting shut.

And gods could reach through dreams.

Persephone saw her father. He looked the same, and that wasn't right at all, because it had been well more than a decade since she'd seen him last. He opened his hands, and sand flowed between them. Black sand.

"What are you doing?" her voice asked, without opening her lips.

"Reminding you."

"Of what?"

"Time."

A shadow passed behind, swift as a breeze. She turned; she turned back and her father was gone. "Who is it?"

"You." The word shook its way out of the depths.

She woke. It was still sunny out; still day. The curtains were blowing around the window like billows of smoke.

Over dinner, her mother brooded.

Persephone missed her friends, but she knew better than to say so aloud. Miss mortals? Care for mortals? No, it was her lot to live in a lonely oblivion, fleeing the gods and the destiny her mother kept secret-but never making ties to this world. Enjoy what was golden, and leave behind anything that smacked too much of pain and permanence.

 _This is no life_ , she told herself. But that was the trouble with immortality.

 _ii._

The underworld was no place of rest-not if you were the one running it.

Hades spent his time there only if he could paint dark rivers into being, filtering through shades of souls until he had floated out towards silence.

With an ever-growing population, the opportunity was rare.

It was much easier to be a lawyer. Much simpler to drink two scotches on evening, scratch the latest incarnation of Cerberus between the ears, and forget.

"You're just stalling," said Hecate, shimmering in the mirror.

"This is 2017," Hades said flatly, not looking up. "You could text."

"I'd rather see you."

"It's been two thousand years since that mattered."

Her eyes would darken that, black wells of danger. He knew how this story played out.

"Zeus will destroy you," she hissed. The lights flickered. Cerberus whined.

Hades raised his eyes and turned his gaze to the mirror. It shattered.

That problem was solved, for the moment. He stood up, hands in his pockets, squaring his shoulders so that the Italian wool of his suit jacket pulled taut. This was a world that set up its own clay idols; it would not welcome back the clashes of deities.

That was why he'd chosen it. Wasn't it simpler, to retreat into obscurity? Responsibility lasted much longer than power. He had claimed no prize; he had existed, and done each and every fickle world a valuable service.

They ruled themselves, now. Zeus would never understand.

The modern day equivalent of marble halls - chrome and modern floor plans - seemed too sterile and heavy, all of a sudden. He snapped his fingers and Cerberus followed him obediently out.

In the Maserati - all black, every damn inch of it - he could breathe. He drove, and drove until the city was gone behind him and the traffic had died down to a few pinpoints of yellow light swirling by.

It was night - his night - and the world did not know him. Not anymore.

When you had lived an eternity, memory was a curse. He shut off the incessant stream that spanned all the way from painted vases to the 24-hour news cycle and thought of rivers. The road might as well be one; sinuous and smooth. He only slowed to a halt when it turned to gravel, and a small cottage loomed ahead like a beacon, or a crossroads-

or a threat.


	3. Chapter 3

_One brother loved power, the other loved peace._

 _Power, more than love, burned out centuries._

 _Peace, when grown bitter, could do little more than bury the dead._

 _The new world had forgotten them. They had not forgotten each other. It was equally cruel._

 _i._

"Hide," her mother said. The room shimmered green and gold around Demeter; she was angry, and more than that, she was afraid.

Persephone stood still as a stone. The darkness of unspoken things might bring her mother closer to the old ways and farther from the world around them, but Persephone was not her mother.

"What," she said distinctly, "Is going on?"

"I never thought _he'd_ come," Demeter muttered. She was pacing the floor; the braided rug, a quaint thing, all but sizzled under her feet. "That hell-beast-"

"Hades?" Persephone asked, with studied calm. The door blew off its hinges. A voice that climbed every inch of Persephone's spine, resonant and mild, said, "I didn't expect someone here to know my name."

In a flash Demeter was between the mangled doorframe and her daughter. "I don't want any trouble," she said, but she sounded like trouble. The earth was trembling. Her mother's earth. Persephone felt a twinge of anger. Outside, a wind was twisting up the trees.

"Demeter," that voice said, with the faintest warning note rippling through calm, "I did not come here to fight. Damn it-well, damn _me_ -I didn't even know it was you."

"I felt you from a mile away," Demeter hissed.

"I don't feel much," he answered, and timbers of the house were trembling. "But now that I'm here, you are one worth talking to. May I come in, or does the whole house have to come down instead?"

Demeter turned her head, and Persephone could feel the warmth and weight of her mother's eyes. It was all out of place in this little provincial farmhouse; _they_ were out of place. At least in the city there was glass and steel and granite, enough to make you feel that time was passing.

"Go upstairs," Demeter said.

But Persephone, of all things, was not one to hide in shadows. If she was going to be a goddess-even half a goddess-the shadows should hide from _her_. She stepped forward.

"I'm not leaving you."

Demeter stepped back from the door. The figure there was lean and tall, in a black void of a suit.

Persephone wrinkled brow. He was nothing like the shapes of humanity Apollo hid behind-all sleek timepieces, and no care for time at all-gold and glamour.

Hades brought with him all the quiet of the second it took for a soundwave to travel. He had pale features, wing-like brows, and hair that was oil-slick black.

The wind had died down, and the buzz of the earth, of life had stopped.

"I didn't know you had a daughter, Demeter," he said.

"You'd be the only one of us," Demeter said, bitingly, "Who didn't know."

Hades' eyes swept the room, and settled back on Persephone. He flicked his wrist and the door slammed up off the ground and into place. It wasn't quite an apology.

Persephone flinched. She hated these reminders, that everything around them was a fragile veil that could be snatched away.

"Why are you here?" she asked. "If you didn't know that we were?"

"You're a child," Hades said, with a twitch of his eyebrows. "Your soul barely reaches to your fingertips." He shrugged fluidly. "Though of course, you have a soul. More than we can say for your mother."

Persephone felt that two decades was enough time to be weary of riddles. "Everyone comes here for me," she said.

"Be quiet," Demeter ordered. "He isn't lying. You're many things, Lord of the Underworld, but you're not a liar."

The room was no longer crackling with the glimmers of Demeter's anger, but Persephone could not be certain why. Was it this god before them who had silenced her mother's powers? She wanted to go home, but it had always been made clear to her that home was not somewhere easy to find.

"Do you have any tea?" Hades asked. "Still a bit chilly from...well, you know where from." He smiled. Persephone had expected it to be an awful smile, but he had perfect teeth, and, curiously enough, dimples. She wouldn't have thought someone with those kind of cheekbones-god or no-could have dimples.

Demeter snapped her fingers and a steaming mug appeared in her hand.

"I could have put a kettle on," Persephone muttered.

"You don't know how."

"Not if it's not electric."

Hades kept smiling, and he took the tea. Then he tilted his head towards Persephone, and said calmly, "You can't be here for this."

She felt a thunderclap-soundless-and realized that she was suddenly no longer in the room. Rather, she was ankle-deep in the rushes at the edge of a pond. Reeling, she realized that she could see the cottage; she was several hundred yards away. A football field's length? Ha. As though she had listened at all when Ad-when Apollo drawled on about sports.

When the shock of being tossed about like this wore off, she was immediately, immensely angry. Her shoes were ruined, sunk down into mud. Her jeans were spattered, and these were five-hundred-dollar jeans. Money was never an issue for Demeter, but Persephone cared, all the same. One didn't ruin two thousand dollars' worth of clothing because you had a flair for the dramatic. Lord of the Underworld indeed! Her only comfort was that Demeter was probably in the process of melting him into the braided rug.

If she could. Persephone felt a twist of something cold closing round her lungs. She threw her ruined shoes aside and dashed back to the house as fast as she could.

 _ii._

All things considered, he knew he was fairly lucky that Demeter only tried to kill him twice.

"She's fine," he said, holding up his hands in a gesture that looked placating, but could turn lethal if necessary. "She's just up the hill a little...perfectly in one piece, I assure you."

"You don't touch her," Demeter spat. Her eyes were shimmering. Demeter was as beautiful, as absolute as ever-he had always preferred to Hera's ambition and Athena's disdain. But Demeter was tired, too. They all were. Or had been.

"I'm sorry," he said, much closer to gentleness than he was accustomed. "I'm sorry, Demeter. Sit down."

She didn't.

He tucked his hands in his pockets and accepted that they would have to do this standing up. "Zeus, after a few millennia spent pouting in the company of various lesser statesmen, thinks that he's found Olympus."

"Olympus fell," Demeter said heatedly. Demeter, when angry, did everything heatedly.

"I'm aware." As if he hadn't been there. As if he hadn't lost-

"So what good does it do if Zeus can tear back the veil again? It would be a crumble of ruins. And I have always hated the cold, and the clouds."

"I do not know what good Zeus thinks it would do to rebuild," Hades said. He had his own thoughts, but they did not need to be said aloud. "But I think he must be stopped." He laced his fingers together and didn't so much think about the past as let it wash over him, when he and Demeter ruled different worlds, but had shared an understanding of what it _meant_ to rule.

"I suppose," Demeter said slowly, "That Zeus wants back Olympus because we have what we once had-as much as we want it anymore, at least-"

"More than we want it," said Hades, very dryly.

"Maybe." She paused, and narrowed her eyes. "He wants back the sky. I understand that. But what I don't understand is-why now? And why are you roving around, instead of working as a coronor or-"

"A lawyer," said Hades, with a little (permissible, he thought) edge.

"Much the same thing." Demeter tilted her chin. "Something's changed. I left the city-"

"Because of your daughter."

"I do everything because of my daughter," Demeter said. "And the rest of us are always sniffing around possibilities."

"Half human, half god," he opined mildly. "In Heracles' day, we certainly called that...a possibility."

"And we all know what happened to him." Demeter glared at him. "I keep my daughter safe. But the winds are changing."

"Hermes agrees."

"You've seen Hermes?"

He wondered if he'd said too much. "He keeps me up-to-date."

"You fossil," said Demeter almost lightly, as if she wasn't as ancient. "More like he's one of the only ones who still speaks to you."

That too. Hades thinned his lips a little. "If Zeus asks for your help, turn him down."

"You didn't tell me why now."

Hades was not a liar, but there were some words he could not force out, even after now. "I don't know."

Demeter knew too much not to know. "We traded Olympus to stop them," she whispered. "And there's only one who would change that..."

Hades was silent.

"If Zeus can't have them gone, he'd rather have Olympus," she said. "As much or as little as it is worth. And it's the only place that he can hope to face your-"

"Don't say his name." But the game was up.

Demeter was paper-white. "I won't help Zeus," she said, "But only if you have another plan."

And that was the trouble: he didn't. But before he could say a word more, the door crashed open.

"I don't give a damn what world you run," Persephone said, through her teeth. Her hair had slipped out of its perfect knot and was hanging in shining tendrils around her face. "You do something like that again, and I'll kill you myself."

He felt something.

He swallowed it down but it wouldn't go. He said aloud, "See, Demeter? I didn't take her from you," and inside his own mind, despite everything else that he faced and would face, he heard the words hum, _not yet._


End file.
